Minnesota Nice is well established, but 2014 was the year for Minnesota Weird in the Minneapolis-St. Paul hip-hop scene. Maybe you only got the merest glimpse via Lizzo’s incandescent "Letterman" spot, doubletiming about rapping in a skirt, while rapping in a skirt (meta!). Scratch the surface and you’ll find the Cities are roiling with talent and inspired gas-face-inducing new directions.
The best Minneapolis rap album this year is not from Minneapolis and is not a rap album at all. Instead, four kids left St. Paul with Macbooks and traveled back in time to make a late-'90s R&B record, or at least an icy, brittle approximation. The Stand4rd—comprising Allan Kingdom, Bobby Raps, budding superproducer Psymun, and SEO heavy lifter Spooky Black—enlisted Doc McKinney (The Weeknd, Drake, Maroon 5) to craft their self-titled debut. The cover looks vaguely like a ghost made of skull and spine eating a heart, which, albeit direct, makes sense for them. The Stand4rd is as infectious as it is lonely, as fly as it is dejected.
While the quartet made waves (and the paper of record) with a slate of sold-out dates, its individual members had stellar years of their own—most notably Allan Kingdom, the twenty-year-old from St. Paul whose Future Memoirs is brooding and bright-eyed in roughly equal parts.
It was Chantz Erolin—Bobby Raps’ old Audio Perm compatriot—who gave Kingdom his stiffest competition on the thoughtful turn-up tip. Chantz’s BREAK SHIT AND DIE EP is 15 breathless minutes, highlighted by the skull-rattling “Dark Horse" (not quite a Katy Perry cover) and the soulful "Curtains & Checkpoints". That seeming discord is the Cities’ great conundrum: can you wear your Jansport into a snowed-in house party? Also essential: The Psymun-produced "Every Cop Is a Bad Person", which is capped by a verse from Tony the Scribe, the rapping half of KILLSTREAK. His partner, Icetep, is fast emerging as one of the Cities’ best beatsmiths, lacing Doomtree workman Sims’ Field Notes EP.
Doomtree, long a part of the Minneapolis hip-hop establisment, had a breakout with Mike Mictlan’s remarkable HELLA FRRREAL, which proved that beyond being funny, the LA transplant can be serious and on point. Similarly, Dem Atlas’ DWNR, his grunge-influenced Rhymesayers debut, is deeply melancholy, and splits the difference on "depressed" and "party mode."
The year’s best out-and-out rapping came courtesy of Muja Messiah, whose God Kissed It, the Devil Missed It is a master class in making indignation sound cool. Produced by Mike the Martyr, God Kissed It posits evil politicians (that covers most of them) and the occult as foreground props but at its core, it’s just about trying to cover rent. (On "Fire Mountain", Muja brags about stunting outside of courthouses, but admits "I ain’t afraid to die/ I just don’t wanna die broke.") God Kissed It also sports a guest verse from Muja’s son, Nazeem, a teenager with an anachronistic third eye.
There were a host of other other notable singles: Greg Grease’s sweaty "Really Tho"; Manny Phesto’s reverent "Cedar Ave"; Mike the Martyr’s charisma clinic "Lyor"; Tall Paul’s bizarre yet beautiful "The Show (Act 1 & 2)", wherein he recounts his Dave Chappelle shout-out; Z’s Dadaist "I Am Sensei"; and Atmosphere’s Eyedea tribute "Flicker", complete with Slug’s fourth-wall-shattering "But I’m certain if you were here right now, you’d ridicule these lyrics/ You’d hate this chorus/ And probably tell me that the concept was too straightforward."
Still, there’s no more Kevin Love. Most of the Randy Moss-Kevin Garnett promo posters are curling up at the corners. But having shed some of the staid conservatism, the Minneapolis-St. Paul rap scene has become one of the weirdest, most experimental in the country, fact. And Prince came back. It was a good year.